History in the Remaking

Exploring the legacy of Bill Monroe, discussing tradition and influence with Glenn Jones, and a two-part conversation with Charalambides

In this edition of The Out Door, we talk tradition and influence with former Cul de Sac bandleader and current solo guitar explorer Glenn Jones and, in a two-part conversation with Charalambides, discuss their new album and let them take us on a guided tour of their 20-year career. But first, we consider the tricky legacy of Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass, who would have turned 100 last week.

I: History in the Remaking

By the numbers, Bill Monroe's impact on modern music is infinite and unquantifiable. Consider that his backing band of six decades, the Blue Grass Boys, eventually recruited between 130 and 150 musicians playing his breakneck synthesis of various American forms, known collectively and commonly as bluegrass. To sample only five, those players included Earl Scruggs, Lester Flatt, Vassar Clements, Jimmy Martin and Peter Rowan-- a dream ensemble whose own styles and sounds have been extremely important both in and well beyond bluegrass.

What's more, Monroe cemented the sound of bluegrass in December 1945 by leading his most famed five-piece at the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, a little more than 100 miles from his impoverished birthplace back in Kentucky. Monroe's music-- deeply personal songs sung in high, feverish harmony with mandolin, guitar, banjo, fiddle, and bass darting through webs beneath and beside the words-- has had a lot of time to have its impact. Remember, December 1945 gave Monroe a seven-year jump on John Cage's silence, a decade on Elvis' shake, and 15 years on the Beatles' instant charisma. Hank Williams was rejectedby the Opry months after Monroe showcased his Flatt-and-Scruggs-based band. And it was Monroe who Carl Perkins heard in Elvis, Monroe's songs who Chuck Berry told Perkins he knew by heart. Listen again to early rock and to country after the Second World War; if you've only heard Monroe's name before, you'll quickly understand that his sound is something you've heard before, too.

Monroe, who died in 1996, would have turned 100 last Tuesday. As expected, his birth and music have been commemorated with numerous editorial paeans, tribute concerts, and museum exhibits. In two northwestern Kentucky towns, Owensboro (home of the bluegrass museum) and Rosine (Monroe's birthplace), celebrations have expectedly stretched across much of September. The "Come Home to Bluegrass" Mandolin Trail runs through December. Last week, a new documentary about Monroe and his Boys premiered. There was a musical, too. And, of course, modern bluegrass practitioners-- J.D. Crowe and Paul Williams among them-- provided entertainment, not to mention appearances by famous Monroe mentees Earl Scruggs and Ralph Stanley (his late brother, Carter, was a Blue Grass Boy).

If all that sounds like a big deal, it was; the bluegrass flock gathered to coronate and remember its patriarch, its hero, its fountainhead of good faith. But in reading all the coverage and considering all the homages, it starts to feel much too insular, as if only those who continue to swear by bluegrass or were directly touched by what Monroe accomplished are giving him his due. This is, of course, the natural progression of art, history, and art history-- as one innovation pushes a form forward, those previous pioneers are maybe remembered but certainly not always honored. People don't regularly talk Beethoven when they discuss the melodies of the Beatles; those praising Brad Paisley (or Doug, for that matter) don't tip their Stetsons to Hank Williams' outlaw spirit every time. The question becomes, then, how or why this happens? Who makes the seemingly arbitrary decision that one generation of music has something or nothing to do with prior movements, even if the links remain? I don't know, but it's clear that Monroe's acknowledged legacy has, in 2011, been mostly confined to that embarrassingly broad tent of Americana. In indie rock land, there has been little to no outright acknowledgment of Monroe's import, though apropos only of his 75th birthday, several marquee rock bands recently lined up to pay tribute to Buddy Holly. As a kid in Texas in the early 50s, Holly actually led a bluegrass band, influenced by Monroe.

Remember: Monroe was not only one of the early autobiographical songwriters but also an instrumentalist who constantly built and rebuilt a band around his distinct sound-- both of those ideas have been essential to several of your favorite indie rock bands. But Monroe's impact on popular music is difficult to identify and trace because he started something that is definitively niche and deliberately limited; you can hear traces of bluegrass (and so, Monroe) in hundreds of bands, from simplistic rock and heavy metal to experimental music and certainly the symphonic indie swells of the last decade. Most any band that shows too many traces of bluegrass, though, is almost immediately sequestered into the Americana realm. (See, for instance, the Avett Brothers.) While the road from Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky" to Fleet Foxes' "Blue Ridge Mountains" is complicated and serpentine, I am sure that road exists. Folks like Glenn Jones and Sir Richard Bishop play with forms that some of the Blue Grass boys helped build, and before chillwave and keyboards and drum pads crashed onto the mainland of indie rock, it seemed like you couldn't throw a copy of I Saw the Light and not hit some cool young band that used mandolin, banjo, fiddle or upright bass-- at least in the studio.